Check back often for news and commentary about Kentucky by David Adams.
Contact via email: kyprogress(at)yahoo.com or Lexington area telephone 537-5372.

Friday, March 21, 2014

Media whiplash on KY ObamaCare will be fun

The Washington Post has another story up today complaining about how hard it is to measure "success" of Obama's health reform. In it, the paper shows again how dishonest media coverage limits public understanding of what has happened up to now and what will happen next.
From Post columnist Chris Cillizza:

"Kentucky has been getting national attention as a place that was trying to make Affordable Care Act work for awhile. The state's governor, Steve Beshear, is a Democrat, and mostly responsible for Kentucky's adoption of a state-based exchange and the Medicaid expansion, made optional by the Supreme Court's decision on the Affordable Care Act in June 2012. Republican lawmakers in the state were not pleased with either move, and now seek to limit the executive power a Kentucky governor can wield."

The biggest problem with the whole mess from Kentucky's perspective is that Beshear wasn't "mostly responsible" for Kentucky's role in ObamaCare, he is solely responsible for it. Unless you count the temporary assist he got from a Franklin Circuit Court judge, Beshear's problem is that he tried to speak for Kentucky in a way our Constitution and statutes do not allow him to speak for Kentucky. And while it is mildly interesting that Senate Republicans filed a bill to "seek to limit the executive power, " which is going nowhere, real story is that deciding to defund the whole operation is now in their hands alone.House Democrats have already failed to present a united front for ObamaCare or Beshear's illegal and unconstitutional approaches to it. When the Senate pulls out ObamaCare funding and sends the budget back to Democrats next week, House Democrats will be forced to stand up for convictions they have already shown they don't have.And then Kentucky will be the center of attention on ObamaCare, pointing in a much better direction.